In 2010, when Emilie and her co-founder Maddie Raedts started their agency, then a fashion inspiration platform under the name Fashiolista, the concept of influencer marketing was virtually unknown. That was at the beginning of the emerging phenomenon of “blogging. Soon Emilie and Maddie discovered the power of digital influencers. It has since become a staple way of marketing. IMA is a forerunner in this field. In total, IMA works internationally with some 15,000 bloggers, vloggers and social influencers who together reach more than 100 million consumers in sectors such as fashion, food, sports and lifestyle. IMA works for brands such as NIVEA, Tommy Hilfiger, Unilever, Chupa Chups, Estée Lauder and Albert Heijn. In 2017, Emilie and Maddie managed to secure the top spot on Forbes “30under30” Media list, which annually lists Europe’s leading and most progressive young innovators.
Human to Human
Partly because “Ad blockers” make it increasingly difficult to reach people, especially certain target groups, with ordinary advertising, advertisers started looking for alternatives. It started with product placement in TV programs. But often this was somewhat artificial and there was not a good match between the people in the program and the products in question.
Then the era of “Storytelling” came about. People increasingly let themselves be influenced by what other people did and said. Famous stars already had a lot of followers. In addition, popular bloggers and vloggers emerged with an audience of millions. For about four years now, not just in fashion, but in numerous categories.
Micro-influencers have also emerged. These have a smaller number of followers (several thousand), but are themselves real fans of the brand in question and have a lot of interaction with their followers. Their genuine passion is appreciated and so their posts are liked and shared heavily. This creates a large reach. And people are much more likely to take something from someone they know and appreciate, with whom they can identify, than from a brand itself. Thus, in addition to Business to Consumer (B2C) communication, people are now talking about Human to Human (H2H) communication.
Impact
Furthermore, we see that influencer marketing used to be mostly on the Awareness and Engagement phases, but is now being used in all phases, including conversion and retention. This is especially strong in channels where everything is happening, such as “We Chat” in China. We see such developments more and more here as well. A brand that deploys this well, for example, is Clarks shoes. The vlogger then goes live selecting and buying shoes and involves his followers and their opinions.
The Influencer marketing Formula is: Impact = Influencer match * content strategy.
The influencer match is, among other things, how an influencer already talks about the brand and about competitors, before she is approached.
A great example is clothing brand Noisy May. That had 6 young girls together with 4 million followers, develop a new collection with the help of designers. Even during the production of the clothes, which took 3.5 months, everything was followed live. The result was that Noisy May gained new customers, such as Zalando and Wehkamp, and the collection sold out within a few weeks. The whole campaign with the 6 girls, in 6 countries, cost less than €100,000.
Many examples
Already during and after the presentation, participants asked many questions. Emilie was able to answer them lively, with examples from various categories. She also had good tips. One of the most important is to give influencers a lot of freedom, what they do must fit the brand, and you can achieve a lot if you let them collaborate with someone with expertise of the brand and product in question.
We had a valuable evening with insights into an area that is relatively new, where there are many developments and where there is still enormous potential for many companies to effectively reach and engage their audiences.
Emilie also made her presentation available to participants. It can be downloaded here.
By Jan-Willem Hoogeweegen, on behalf of the organizing TM
N-team